Trembling Bells formed in 2008, born from Glasgow’s close-knit scene, united by shared tastes, passions and imagination. “We all like music on a forensic level,” says Neilson. “We’re all obsessive, pedantic, maladjusted, unemployable nerds.”

It is tempting to regard them as a band out of time, five tempunauts who would rather be hanging out in the studio of William Morris, or Weimar-era Berlin, or quaffing cider in Merrie England than in the sometimes tawdry, often dull world of social networking and digital downloads. They seem profoundly nostalgic, yearning for the past like a child for its mother. Is that fair comment? “Possibly,” says Neilson. “I’m a little bit cautious about that because we get called folk-rock quite a lot. But no, I don’t really relate to much of the modern world. I feel that there’s a lot to learn from 30,000 years of civilisation.”

That range of cultural and counter-cultural interest is apparent from the front cover of The Sovereign Self - a series of twenty portraits painted by Lavinia Blackwall: an eclectic gallery of genius from Emily Dickinson to Aeschylus; Lou Reed to Ovid.

Another key influence, psych-folk pioneers the Incredible String Band, has loomed large in the lives of Trembling Bells in recent years. They have toured with ISB co-founder Mike Heron, performing tracks from his songbook.

“It was a profound pleasure to get inside that music,” says Neilson. “Everyone in the Trembling Bells grew up with the Incredible String Band. I remember listening to them on the school bus and being petrified that anyone would hear what was in my ears. It was so audaciously imaginative and disarmingly whimsical that it was almost embarrassing to listen to when you were fifteen. But it really came to shape the music I aspired to create. When we do the concerts, you can tell that it means a lot to the people in the audience and it means a lot to me to play it. It’s music that is very cherishable because it's so idiosyncratic.”

Having released five cracking LPs in six years, in addition to a number of side-projects, Trembling Bells show no signs of slowing down. Already, work is being done on solo records from three members, and there are plans for an album of reworked traditional folk songs with vocals from comedian Stewart Lee. This is quite simply a group of people with music pouring out of them.